Ok. Do you have a suggestion for how to publish the anonymous accounts? Should it just be "post as anonymous" like when you post? Or should there just be community accounts I circulate and people spread the word? Or should I actually post some community accounts logins permanently somewhere?

I think it's not a bad idea, because people have privacy here but not anonymity. One post can be connected to another by username. People might be more inclined to say edgy, personal, or nasty things if it couldn't be publicly connected to their username. It could be good and bad.

It could still be controlled because on the backend, it would be linked to an account, so spam would still result in banning.

If you try this I would make it very limited. Perhaps even restricted to creating a single thread or making a single post. You really do not want to make it practical for people to solely function as 100% anonymous posters. And plenty of users only make a handful of posts a day, and make threads once in a blue moon. Wouldn't it suck if, say, hemidemisemipumo was just an anonymous poster?

Honestly though I'd even oppose that quota system, because it's a step in the wrong direction for a gain we really don't need.

Let's say the feature allowed you to activate anonymity in any one thread you haven't yet posted in, once a day.

I'm looking at the pros and cons.

Pros, obviously, people who share the above poaster's sentiments get some added degree of anonymity.

Cons, people can be two faces.

I like to associate my name with the vast majority of my comments, because I want to get credit for saying something clever once in a blue moon. I imagine other people have identities that they like to adhere to.

So if I had a once-a-day anonymity feature, I wouldn't abandon my identity. I might assume an additional one, though.

lol like burners? If you're talking about giving away revealing info, doobsians will just copy and paste it into their own poasts for safe-keeping and list who you are if they so choose.

And if you say those can be modded, consider that this doobs figure could also just go back to one of their own old 1-post threads and edit it to include said info, making it harder to find but still logged for "safe-keeping."

CR. C12, if your fears were true, nobody would poast with sudo monikers. Nor will anonymous poasting destroy the bort. most people still want to derive status from their community, even a toxic dump such as this. they will stay sudo to get credit for their poasts.

The joke sub-forums are a primitive proof of concept of something that is going to be very good for attracting more law and career discussion (which I don't care about very much, but it brings in new people), it's just part of a development process. The work on the back end to achieve it was not insignificant, but the user experience for syndicated posts will be vastly different. The sub-forums look like forums right now. They are just search indices at this point.

The only way to access them at some point will be through search. Search is going to be a more prominent part of the site.

I think community accounts or other 'anonymous' posting solutions are a great idea for the overall health of the board and they have a long tradition on XO.

On the other hand, XO will explode with rage if we encourage anonymous posting. The board's fixation on static monikers and identities, even when posters don't care to have them, has always baffled me. Go to church if you want a community you screechy little queers.

Rach don't do anything at all. All of your additions in the last 10 years have backfired and you've eventually backtracked on all of them so just preemptively correct yourself by not doing any of this in the first place please.

How has it backfired? There is a permadelete feature in the garbage board that has hidden all kinds of outings. If mods aren't using that feature enough, then there is an administrative/managerial failure on my part and mods.

Garbage was a response to people complaining about abusive moderation. I think it works well, because every time people complain about excessive moderation, there it is.

Perhaps only one page of garbage should be publicly visible. Wouldn't that do the trick?

These aren't failures, these are evolving solutions that would benefit from creativity as much as constructive criticism, but not always wiping the slate clean.

So I think what's going on is that people are afraid that people are going to say something nasty. And maybe that's a valid fear.

To see what people thought, I suggested an extremely limited, trial feature for anonymized posting in a single thread per day. Only threads in which someone hadn't participated in would be eligible. Still, there is vocal resistance, but no specifics. Even when I assure you that I can just disable a problem feature, I'm told that it's some kind of Pandora's box.

Just claims that every change to the board makes it worse.

90% of the changes to the board happen behind the scenes. Nobody is even aware of them.

We love to talk about how much we value anonymity and honest discussion, which sounds really noble and righteous, but we're actually afraid of it. We're afraid of one thread a day with a masked username.

I'm not really worried about people saying nasty things. People already do that.

What I'm worried about is that it will steadily normalize anonymity on the site, and I think that would be a disaster. I've said that repeatedly so I don't get why you're pretending I've given no reasons.

People already post a lot of IRL stuff. Each poster makes their own calculation about what's worth revealing and what isn't, and the balance seems pretty much fine. How much extra would you really get from this feature? Lots of people are still going to be wary of even a single post revealing that they go here.

Hey, I'm not trying to pretend. I just don't think most people would want to abandon their identities and I don't think we really know what would happen. I do know that most people don't just post in one thread a day, and I bet that those who do tend not to be the type who would care to anonymize themselves.

But you could be right, too. I just know you're extremely conservative about change, and I have fun experimenting with things, so it's a philosophical difference.

Somebody already pointed out ejmr, where there is now an overwhelming preference for anonymous posting. Once you make the option available at all, some people will want it expanded, and soon a high degree of anonymity will simply be irrevocable.

a) since it's still connected to their account i'm not sure if people will view this as truly anonymous

b) i'm not proposing a different system here. the option of getting alts has always been around so long as you've been responsive to email. my point is that 1) the old system keeps alts only for those who have a reason to go out and get them, versus just giving every poster on this bort - whether somewhat sane or batshit crazy - access to anonymous posting in their pocket immediately, and 2) it prevents zero-recourse batshit crazy anonymous posting because posting from a pumo alt is still traceable to that alt.

also i think it just runs counter to the spirit of this site. part of what makes it better than a place like ejmr is the recognizable community.